tag: Dennard Scaling

Specialization Vs. Generalization In Processors
By Brian Bailey - 10 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 1

Academia has been looking at specialization for many years, but solutions were rejected because general-purpose solutions were advancing fast enough to keep up with most application requirements. That is no longer the case. The introduction and support of the RISC-V processor architecture has attracted a lot of attention, but whether that is the right direction for the majority of modern comput... » read more

Chip Design CEO Outlook
By Ed Sperling - 25 May, 2023 - Comments: 0

Semiconductor Engineering sat down with Joseph Sawicki, executive vice president for IC EDA at Siemens Digital Industries Software; John Kibarian, president and CEO of PDF Solutions; John Lee, general manager and vice president of Ansys' Semiconductor Business Unit; Niels Faché, vice president and general manager of PathWave Software Solutions at Keysight; Dean Drako, president and CEO of IC M... » read more

Balancing Power And Heat In Advanced Chip Designs
By Karen Heyman - 10 Nov, 2022 - Comments: 1

Power and heat use to be someone else's problem. That's no longer the case, and the issues are spreading as more designs migrate to more advanced process nodes and different types of advanced packaging. There are a number of reasons for this shift. To begin with, there are shrinking wire diameters, thinner dielectrics, and thinner substrates. The scaling of wires requires more energy to driv... » read more

Chip Design Shifts As Fundamental Laws Run Out Of Steam
By Ann Mutschler - 31 Oct, 2022 - Comments: 12

Dennard scaling is gone, Amdahl's Law is reaching its limit, and Moore's Law is becoming difficult and expensive to follow, particularly as power and performance benefits diminish. And while none of that has reduced opportunities for much faster, lower-power chips, it has significantly shifted the dynamics for their design and manufacturing. Rather than just different process nodes and half ... » read more

New End Markets, More Demand For Complex Chips
By Ed Sperling - 16 May, 2022 - Comments: 0

Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss economic conditions and how that affects chip design with Anirudh Devgan, president and CEO of Cadence; Joseph Sawicki, executive vice president of Siemens EDA; Niels Faché, vice president and general manager at Keysight; Simon Segars, advisor at Arm; and Aki Fujimura, chairman and CEO of D2S. This discussion was held in front... » read more

Transistors Reach Tipping Point At 3nm
By Mark LaPedus - 23 Feb, 2022 - Comments: 1

The semiconductor industry is making its first major change in a new transistor type in more than a decade, moving toward a next-generation structure called gate-all-around (GAA) FETs. Although GAA transistors have yet to ship, many industry experts are wondering how long this technology will deliver — and what new architecture will take over from there. Barring major delays, today’s GAA... » read more

Optimization Driving Changes In Microarchitectures
By Ann Mutschler - 23 Sep, 2021 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor ecosystem is at a turning point for how to best architect the CPU based on the explosion of data, the increased usage of AI, and the need for differentiation and customization in leading-edge applications. In the past, much of this would have been accomplished by moving to the next process node. But with the benefits from scaling diminishing at each new node, the focus is s... » read more

Do We Have An IC Model Crisis?
By Brian Bailey - 27 May, 2021 - Comments: 0

Models are critical for IC design. Without them, it's impossible to perform analysis, which in turn limits optimizations. Those optimizations are especially important as semiconductors become more heterogenous, more customized, and as they are integrated into larger systems, creating a need for higher-accuracy models that require massive compute power to develop. But those factors, and other... » read more

A Renaissance For Semiconductors
By Brian Bailey - 29 Oct, 2020 - Comments: 2

Major shifts in semiconductors and end markets are driving what some are calling a renaissance in technology, but navigating this new, multi-faceted set of requirements may cause some structural changes for the chip industry as it becomes more difficult for a single company to do everything. For the past decade, the mobile phone industry has been the dominant driver for the semiconductor eco... » read more

Designing For Extreme Low Power
By Brian Bailey - 09 Jul, 2020 - Comments: 3

There are several techniques available for low power design, but whenever a nanowatt or picojoule matters, all available methods must be used. Some of the necessary techniques are different from those used for high-end designs. Others have been lost over time because their impact was considered too small, or not worth the additional design effort. But for devices that last a lifetime on a si... » read more

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